


Artificial Intelligence Decides Egbert Is Depressed

by Robot_Face



Category: AI Dungeon 2 (Video Game), Homestuck
Genre: AI Dungeon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24804598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robot_Face/pseuds/Robot_Face
Summary: Transcript of an AI dungeon session I had where I fed it text from the Epilogue, then improvised.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Artificial Intelligence Decides Egbert Is Depressed

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You are Dirk Strider. I am Dirk Strider.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22064845) by [Skyplayer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyplayer/pseuds/Skyplayer). 



It starts with a crack. Everything else rises up from that like steam: a trembling thread that cuts through space in jagged lines, splintering the void into razor-sharp shards of putrefying leptons and quarks popping apart like raw eggs in a microwave. It's coming undone at a subatomic level, from the bottom up, from the inside out. From the top down it looks like the eye of a storm—a black hole so supermassive that it spans the width of eternity. It turns infinity into something as thin and fragile as cellophane; shreds it of its dimensions, a piece of paper pinched together at either end, a hole poked through it.

At the center of that hole the edges can be heard fraying. Pandemonium, as continuity buckles in the middle and the two ends come smashing together. Around the hole, ghosts scream. They claw at the dying borders of their dreams with fingernail-chipping desperation. They whip together like the wind, trailing the mutilated streaks of their hypothetical futures with them. It’s a multifractal neon cyclone of primordial conclusion. A churning blender of hyperfinal, catastrophically terminal, overwhelmingly permanent double-death. The screaming distorts and plunges low as it gets closer to the cavity.

At the center, that distortion turns into an eerie music. That’s where the cacophony ends—the shattering, the screaming, the squelching, the sounds of elemental particles being torn apart like string cheese shoved through a meat grinder, then dumped down a strangely melodious garbage disposal. It all returns to the same tonic dominant, matching pitch and tone, ironing out the rebellious flats and sharps until the discordance becomes exquisite. A subharmonic symphony that can only be heard in the bones. At the dead center of the event, it is extremely quiet. A silence made of all the suffering that limitless sempiternity can hold, bleeding together until the prism turns to obsidian. It’s too vast to comprehend, too black to behold without closing your eyes. Retreating to the back of your own eyelids is to seek the comfort of a familiar darkness. It is to reject an absolute tenebrosity so perfectly alien, it threatens to rip the humanity right through your eye sockets.

This is the end of everything. This is the end of Paradox Space. You are not a paradox. You have no future. There is nothing left for you here except death and annihilation.

The universe has been destroyed, but it will never die completely.

> You wake up.  
Your name is John Egbert, and you have just had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare. You snap out of bed, soaked in sweat, your heart hammering like a fire alarm. It is just as you feared.

You’ve been dreaming in anime again. And you have no idea what it could mean.

> You look outside just to make absolutely sure the world is not ending.  
The sun is coming in through your window in bars of soft yellow. The only sound you can hear for miles is the wind skimming the hollows of your neighbors’ pipe homes. It’s a normal day in the salamander village, which you refer to as Salamander Village because the damned salamanders never bothered to give this village a name, you guess. Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know, because you created it.  
You've just gotten up from bed after a night of horrible nightmares. You feel oddly groggy, like you should be functioning at a much higher level than you currently are.

> You check the refrigerator.  
You have a tuna sandwich sitting on the counter. You stare at it blankly for a moment, wondering why you ever bought it in the first place. Then you put it back in the refrigerator and go back to bed.

> You dream in anime again.  
Everything about you is bright and flashy, from your body clothed in pink armor to your oversized sword that looks like a pink-striped lollipop. You feel like a tool.

> Oh god. Trickster mode. Oh god oh fuck oh shit oh damn.  
Your life is an endless string of bad decisions.  
You're having the same nightmare again. It was one of your worst ones, where you were trapped in a game of Life and could not escape.

> You fly around and get shit done like you can't bring yourself to do in the waking world.  
You grab a lollipop and power up your jetpack, before soaring through the air and out of your house. You pass by a mailman on his motorcycle who looks like he's in a bad condition.

> You say "Hey there mailman!"  
The mailman looks at you in surprise, then he swerves and falls off the road into a big pile of wet mud.  
Nope, that doesn't work.

> You pay him no mind. Keep going.  
You fly out of the village, past the clusters of ramshackle homes. Then you see a steep hill, and decide to use it as a shortcut to your destination.  
About halfway up the hill, you hit an invisible barrier. You try to pass through, but it's no use.

> You wonder why it's there. Why is it always there? Why is it always there?  
It's there to stop you from flying away. To keep you grounded.  
You remember the first time you noticed it. It was a few months ago, and you were just exploring the skies. You couldn't stop laughing. You laughed so hard you couldn't breathe, and had to fall out of the sky.

> You start laughing.  
You laugh uncontrollably, and fall off the hill. You smash through trees and into a mountain, then bounce around inside it like a human pinball until you're nothing but a bloody smear inside an immovable boulder.

> You say "HEE HEE. HAA HAA. HOO HOO."  
The barrier vanishes. You take a deep breath, feeling the sweet air flood into your lungs, and fly away.

> You wake up again.  
You sit up from bed, shaking off the numbness that still lingers from the nightmare. You stare at your hands, noticing for the first time that they're shaking.

> You realize that you're depressed.  
You stand up and go to the bathroom. You stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror.  
You think about how you can't sleep. How you've been having nightmares for months.  
Suddenly, you remember something. The night terrors. You shake your head, trying to forget it.  
You remember the symptoms. The regular feeling of impending doom. The paralysis. The memories begin to flood back.  
The night terrors. The paralysis. The impending doom.  
You go to the kitchen for a late breakfast. You realize you're not hungry, but eat it anyway.

> You step outside for once.  
You sit on the grass outside your house, taking a deep breath of the dew-soaked air. You stare at the sky. You think you can see a few wispy clouds up there.

> You go visit your good friend Dave Strider.  
You walk along the path to Dave's house. It's a nice day; in the distance, you can see his sister telling off one of their neighbors.  
You knock on the door. His sister opens it.  
"Oh, it's you."

> You say "Rose? What are you doing here?"  
"Uh, come in, come in," she says, opening the door and closing it behind you.  
You walk into the living room.  
"I'm Rose," she says.

> You say "I know. Rose, are you okay?"  
"Yeah, I'm fine."  
"I heard you had a scare."  
"Scare? What do you mean?"  
"You nearly died."  
She stares at you blankly.

> You say "The omniscience thing? You were in the hospital."  
"Oh."  
She looks at you blankly again, and turns around. You notice her eyes are red and puffy. She probably hasn't been sleeping either.

> You say "God, Rose, I'm so sorry I didn't come see you. I just laid around in my house like a depressed sack of shit for a year."  
"It's fine," she says. "I'm fine now."  
She doesn't look fine. You need to get her out of here.  
"You should go home," she says.  
"You should."

> You pace around the room.  
You pace up and down the room. You wonder what to do.  
"Um, Rose?"  
"Hm?"  
"Why is the sky blue?"  
"I don't know.

> You say "I mean, why is it SO DAMN blue? We made it this way. We could have made it any way we wanted."  
She thinks for a moment.  
"I don't know," she says.  
She looks at you.  
"I think... I think it's because of how our eyes work.

> You say "Where is Dave anyway?"  
"He's... I don't know. Out."  
"He isn't here?"  
She shakes her head.  
"I thought he was here."  
You look around the room.

> You say "He never leaves the house. Is Karkat out too?"  
"No. He's in his room."  
You walk up to the door and knock.  
"Karkat? Are you in there?" you call.  
There is no response.

> You say "Karkat, I know we haven't talked in like forever, but I just wanted to say I miss you."  
No response.  
You knock on the door again.  
"Karkat! I really just wanted to say I miss you, man."  
"Go away," he says, his voice muffled by the door.

> You say "Sorry."  
You turn to Rose.  
"I have to go now."  
"Okay," she says.  
You quickly turn, pick up a rock, and head off into the woods. You sprint as fast as you can.

> You punch a tree.  
You throw the rock, and it smacks into a tree, making a large splintering sound as the wood flies several meters forward.  
"Oops," you say.

> You scream to let out your feelings.  
You scream into the trees. You scream in pain and frustration, letting out your emotions. Your voice fades as you notice that the area is quiet. The birds have stopped flying.  
"Fuck."  
The silence is deafening. You look around, but the birds have disappeared. The leaves that once swayed in the wind have fallen still. Everything has gone quiet.

> You don't do the windy thing. Don't do it.  
The wind howls, blowing straight through your internal monologue.  
"Stop it."  
You stare into the trees. They're moving. You step back. The wind picks up, tearing through the leaves.

> You try to stop the hurricane.  
You try to get control of the wind, but you can't. The leaves are caught up in a vicious cycle of being torn and buffeted, but you can't get control of it.

> You try not to let anyone get hurt.  
You scream, desperately trying to get the wind to stop. The wind picks up, and the leaves go flying. The wind tears through the forest, carrying fallen trees and dead branches.

> You scream again.  
You scream into the wind, and the wind stops. The wind dies down, and everything is still.  
The birds are back. You stare at them in awe, staring at the foliage as it gently sways.

> You pass out on the spot.  
You don't scream again.

**Author's Note:**

> Holy shit dude I couldn't have written anything as awesome as that bit at the end if I was actively trying to. "The wind howls, blowing straight through your internal monologue." What a fucking line


End file.
